Pat & Mat

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Pat & Mat (Slovak: A je to!, Pat a Mat) is a Czechoslovak stop-motion animated series created by Lubomír Bene? and Vladimír Jiránek, which first appeared in 1976. The main characters of the series are two handymen, Pat and Mat, who are inventive but extremely clumsy. As of 2015, 91 episodes of the show have been produced, and it has been syndicated in a large number of countries due to its lack of dialogue.

Video Pat & Mat

Name

The names "Pat" and "Mat" are Czech and Slovak words meaning "stalemate" and "checkmate" respectively. These words are taken from the Persian chess terms: p?t (Persian: ????) and m?t (Persian: ????).

Maps Pat & Mat

The show

Each episode typically features the two characters facing mostly self-made problems, and trying to solve them using a range of possible and impossible tools and construction gadgets. Their solutions appear to work, before everything suddenly goes wrong, leading to even more problems than before. However, Pat and Mat invariably find a solution in the end, usually via a surprising or innovative method. They then shake hands, before making their trademark hand gesture with a bent hand and closed fist.

According to the authors, it is manual ineptitude that inspires the stories. Alongside the humour, another motif of the show is the importance of an optimistic approach towards life. The two characters always get into problematic situations, but they never give up until they solve the problem in imaginative ways.

The show is also memorable for its soundtrack, composed by Petr Skoumal, of which the main parts are the theme song and a harmonica tune.

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History

The two characters first appeared in a 1976 short film entitled Ku?áci (Fitters). Later, the characters appeared in more shorts, making their own series on Slovak TV entitled ... A je to! (... And that's it!), where they got their final look. The two handymen got their names Pat and Mat in 1989, and this became the name of the show.

While creating the two characters, the authors had in mind especially entertainment for adults, but the show became popular with all audiences. However, in former Czechoslovakia, the first 29 episodes of the series could be produced as children's television only, in a short film format of 7-9 minutes.

As a result of its lack of dialogue, the show was syndicated around the world, being broadcast in countries including Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), Sweden, Syria, Iraq, Poland, the former Yugoslavia, Iceland, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Austria, Switzerland, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Norway, Spain, Iran, Hungary, Jordan, South Africa, and South Korea. In the Netherlands, the characters are given dubbed dialogue, voiced by Kees Prins and Siem van Leeuwen. In Australia the show aired as part of a weekly, half-hour collection of animated shorts on the SBS show Kaleidoscope.

In 1990, after the collapse of the communist regime, Lubomír Bene? founded his own AIF Studio in Prague (production) and Zürich (marketing, sales, financing), where he and his team produced 14 more episodes, and released all 49 of them to the international market.

In 1998, three years after Bene?'s death, his studio went into bankruptcy, leading to a copyright dispute over the characters and the 50th episode, which was therefore never released. Bene?'s son Marek founded his own studio, Patmat Film. Production of episodes was resumed in 2002 by Ateliéry Bonton Zlín, resulting in 28 episodes being produced by three studios (Ateliéry Bonton, Anima and Patmat) in just three years. Many crew members were veterans who had worked on the original TV series.

The characters were revived once again in 2011 by Bene? for a new series, Pat a Mat na venkov? (Pat & Mat in the Country). The pilot, Postele (Beds), produced in 2009, premiered at the 50th Zlín Film Festival in 2010. Twelve more episodes followed from 2011 to 2015, produced at Patmat Film and filmed in 16:9. Bene? directed and wrote all 13 episodes. The episodes were released on DVD in 2013 and received their TV premiere on the Dutch channel VPRO on 9 June 2013.

To celebrate the show's 40th anniversary, seven new episodes were shown in cinemas in 2016 in several countries, including the Netherlands. Gusto Entertainment announced in December 2015 that a full-length feature film would be released in cinemas in 2016.

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Awards

Several Pat & Mat episodes have received prizes and awards at international animation festivals.

The 38th episode The Cyclists, directed by Lubomír Bene? and animated by Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, participated in the "Annecy '93" (Annecy, France) animation festival competition, and was invited to a number of other world festivals. The episode was also included in the selection "The Best of Annecy '93" by Cinémathèque Québécoise (Montreal), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and presented by these institutions in their autumn 1993 show.

The 44th episode The Billiards, animated by Franti?ek Vá?a, was selected for the "Annecy '95" competition, and invited to many other international film festivals. The episode was awarded two prizes at the World Animation Celebration in Agoura, California in March 1997:

• 1st prize - best animation for a daytime TV series
• 2nd prize - best stop motion professional animation.

The 50th episode Playing Cards (original name Karty) written, animated and directed by Franti?ek Vá?a, was selected for the "Annecy '99" TV competition.

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Controversies

Czechoslovakia

In socialist Czechoslovakia, the authors had to explain their "subversive" characters and stories to the Communist regime's watch-dogs in Prague, and were once asked whether they had chosen the shirt colours, red and yellow, to make fun of the Soviet-Chinese tensions. However, their explanations were "unsatisfactory", and so the "ideological impurity" remained and further production of Pat & Mat was banned. To get around the ban, their Czechoslovak Television colleagues in Bratislava assigned them production means so the show could continue in the same studio in Prague where Lubomír Bene? and his crew worked, under the cover of the Slovak studio, an arrangement which lasted for 28 episodes from 1979-1985. Mat's shirt was changed from red to a neutral grey until 1989, at which point the Communist regime collapsed and it was safe to make Mat's shirt red again.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, the children's television programmers of the German-language station Schweizer Fernsehen banned some of the episodes because they contained high amounts of slapstick violence, which they deemed "too dangerous". The French- and Italian-language channels broadcast the offending episodes as normal.

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List of episodes

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50th episode

The 50th episode The Cards (Czech: Karty) completed in 1998 by some members of the original AIF Studio and originally prepared with Lubomir Bene?, was to be the beginning of a new format of the show. It was directed, animated and written by Franti?ek Vá?a, and unlike earlier episodes it was filmed in widescreen format (16:9) and slightly longer (lasting 11 minutes), with dialogue, a new soundtrack and new opening and closing sequences. The characters were voiced by Czech actor David Nykl.

Bene? and Jiránek's original plan was to make further episodes of the new series, and possibly also half-hour episodes and a feature film. However, these projects were never realised due to a breakdown of relations between the creators of the episode and the management team from the Prague AIF Studio after Lubomir Bene?'s death. Eventually the Prague AIF Studio declared bankruptcy, and as a result the 50th episode has never been released or distributed. The only trace from the episode was a screenshot posted on the AIF Studio Pat & Mat website. The former management set up a new studio called Animation People and posted more screenshots on their website, which were taken down in September 2010. The studio later uploaded a small clip of the episode onto the website. The episode was eventually uploaded to YouTube, taken from a Korean VHS.

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Titles in other languages

Original

• Czech Republic, Slovakia, Czechoslovakia: Ku?áci, A je to!, Pat a Mat
  followers: Pat a Mat se vracejí

Other languages (in alphabetic order)

* In the Dutch version the characters talk, whereas in the original and all other countries there is no dialogue. Pat is voiced by Kees Prins and Mat by Simon van Leeuwen.

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Home media

After being released on VHS for ten years, the first 35 episodes were released on DVD in the early 2000s, with the 28 new episodes featuring in the last release in 2005. Shorts from the AIF era were initially unavailable because of copyright issues, but appeared on DVD for the first time in 2007.

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English Dub

In 1999, AIF Asia located in South Korea dubbed Pat & Mat episodes in English for educational purpose. The dub covered episodes 1-49. The dub was originally released on 10 VHS Tapes, and re-released in 2003 for 10 DVD discs.

Related products

At least two books with the series' characters have been published:

• Michl, Ji?í (1994). Pat & Mat : ...a je to!. Czech Republic: Egmont. 
• Sýkora, Pavel; Jiránek, Vladimír; Bene?, Lubomír (2010). Pat a Mat doká?ou v?echno [Pat and Mat can do anything] (3rd ed.). Albatros. ISBN 9788000025933. 

On 1 August 2007 a Czech computer development company, Centauri Production, announced via their website that they had secured the rights to create a Pat & Mat video game. The game was released in the Czech Republic on 1 October 2009, and other EU countries in 2010. The game is available in English and Czech, and is also available for purchase via Steam and Desura.

There is a wide range of Pat & Mat merchandise available, including games, dolls, key rings, office material, posters and T-shirts. In Dutch supermarkets Pat & Mat food is also available.

References

External links

• Pat & Mat on IMDb
• Official website of Lubomír Bene?' AIF Studio
• Official website of Lubomír Bene?' followers
• Pat & Mat fansite
• Official website of the Pat & Mat video game

Source of article : Wikipedia